Where’s Auburn going to be seeded? For now, it’s super messy
(Photo credit: Todd Van Emst)
I’m about to hit the road to Duluth, Ga., for the Auburn women’s basketball team’s first-round, SEC Tournament matchup with Florida, but before I leave, I want to confuse the heck out of all of you.
A long discussion took over the media room after last night’s historic 89-80 upset over Mississippi State when it came to determining Auburn’s potential SEC Tournament seed. Considering that Auburn will need upsets galore to make an impact in the tournament, whatever seed it receives may seem minute. And it very well may be. But the difference between the fourth and fifth seed is huge, considering that one team, should it win its first-round game, would face Final Four favorite Kentucky, while the other would match up with an apparently very beatable Mississippi State team.
The craziest part? The fifth-seed, while drawing a much better team in the first round, would get the Bulldogs.
Here are a few things we know about Auburn, which currently sits alone in fourth place with one game to play against fifth-place Alabama.
- The Tigers can finish anywhere from third to fifth.
- A win Saturday clinches nothing worse than the fourth seed.
- A loss Saturday doesn’t necessarily leapfrog Alabama ahead of Auburn in the standings.
First, let’s run down all the tiebreakers, listed in order of their relevance.
1. head-to-head
2. division record (10 games)
3. record vs. No. 1 team in division proceeding through the No. 6 team if necessary
4. non-division record (6 games)
5. record vs. No. 1 team in the opposite division proceeding through the No. 6 team if necessary
6. coin flip by the Commissioner.
If we’re just talking about the battle for the fourth seed, these will only be required if Auburn loses to Alabama on Saturday. If that happens, it gets crazy messy, but a coin flip will not be required.
Tiebreaker No. 5 will be the determining factor, and it will come down to the final standing of the East’s two bottom-dwellers, South Carolina and Georgia. Both teams are tied for fifth at 5-10. Auburn beat Georgia, Alabama beat South Carolina. South Carolina plays at Vanderbilt on Saturday, Georgia is at LSU.
If South Carolina wins, it will finish higher than Georgia no matter what the Bulldogs do against LSU because of its win earlier in the season against Kentucky. That scenario would bump Alabama ahead of Auburn for fourth place.
If South Carolina loses, it still doesn’t matter what the Bulldogs do against LSU because Georgia’s 4-6 division record would be better than USC’s 3-7 mark. That scenario would keep Auburn in fourth place, even if it lost to Alabama.
The Tigers, though, can do better than the four-seed. Here’s how.
They have to win and Arkansas has to lose. That’s it.
What, you thought there’d be more? We only have to go to Tiebreaker No. 2 to settle this debate. An Auburn win Saturday would give it a 6-4 record in the division. An Arkansas loss to Ole Miss on Saturday would not only prevent it from finishing in second place—which it would with a victory—but it would drop its division record to 5-5.
That scenario would pit Auburn against whichever team finishes worse between South Carolina and Georgia for the first round and Vanderbilt in the second round.
Don’t get your hopes up if Ole Miss loses out and finishes with the same, 7-9 division record as the Tigers. The Rebels own Tiebreaker No. 1 over Auburn because of their two victories over the Tigers this season.
0 Comments
You can be the first one to leave a comment.